De La Rue Divests Paper Business to Epiris

De La Rue Plc (or the “Group”) has agreed to sell a 90% stake in its security and banknote paper business which will be renamed Portals De La Rue to Epiris, a British private equity fund, and management

This transaction will limit De La Rue’s exposure to the external paper market, while securing paper supplies and maintaining the Group’s position as the world’s leading integrated banknote supplier. It will also enable the Group to strengthen its balance sheet and to focus on providing innovative technology solutions for the currency, identity and brand protection markets.

Portals De la Rue was valued at an Enterprise Value of £68m which equates to a multiple of 12.8x average adjusted EBIT 2015 – 2018

As part of the transaction, Portals De La Rue will commit to supply pre-agreed volumes of paper to De La Rue with a pre-agreed price mechanism for the next 10 years. The Group will also be Portals De La Rue’s preferred supplier for security features

The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2018

Portals De La Rue’s main product categories include:

Banknote paper: paper for banknotes printing for most widely used currencies

Security paper: paper for the production of passports, high security documents and other identity or anti-counterfeiting solutions